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Did you know that 330 million people worldwide have some sort of visual impairment? Did you know that this audience has more than $1 trillion – yes, trillion with a “T” – in disposable income? Are your digital marketing efforts inadvertently leaving out a major percentage of your target audience? Let’s go over some best practices for marketing accessibility to ensure that you’re not losing an audience that’s equivalent to the population of the entire United States.

Don’t Dismiss Your ALT Attributes

It’s easy to leave out ALT attributes, dismissing them as a minor factor in your overall strategy, but as any SEO will tell you, that is far from the case. The ALT attribute is not only the feature that allows bots to “read” your images but it is also the text that is used when a user is accessing your content with a screen reader.

Screen readers and other similar types of technology are used much more often than you’d think and by a wider audience than just those with a visual impairment that hinders the ability to see the content you’re creating. Consider your smartphone – many users are asking Siri to read their texts and emails for them. An empty ALT attribute in your email will force Siri to read the file name and other irrelevant information that take away from the actual message you want to convey.

Is Your Color Palette User-Friendly?

When you’re establishing your branding and choosing a color palette that will be used throughout your marketing efforts, accessibility is not often at the forefront of the decision. This could mean that the colors you’re using make it impossible for those who are color blind to see your message. If you’re not working with an experienced designer, your color palette could be hard to digest for even someone who isn’t color blind.

When you’re looking at colors, two displays of the same color are going to have a contrast ratio of 1:1. Your contrasting colors, white and black, for example, are going to have a contrast ratio of 21:1. When you are using two colors in your marketing, the recommended contrast ratio is a minimum of 4.5:1. If you’re not meeting this standard in your designs, it is likely that your marketing is going unseen by a large portion of the worldwide population.

Let’s Talk Links

Your links play into your color scheme, too. Often, designers like to make your links stand out with a contrasting color that sets the anchor text apart from the rest of the body. However, it’s nearly impossible to know what types of visual impairments, including colorblindness, your target audience has. Chances are, a contrasting color alone is not going to resonate with everyone. Links should always be underlined, even when the anchor text is a different color. This ensures that everyone in your audience knows that’s where they should click to be directed to related content.

Lay Text To The Left

It is estimated that 1 in every 10 people are affected by dyslexia. Did you know that your text alignment can actually help those who have dyslexia read your content more easily? Text should be left aligned in all of your communication efforts. This provides an anchor for those with dyslexia to come back to, making it easier to read the text.

Talk Is Cheap

As we mentioned earlier, more and more people are interacting with digital marketing on their mobile devices. From display banners to emails, this concept of mobile-friendliness is not new, but there is more that plays into mobile friendliness than just the way it looks.

As the technology evolves, people are using voice-activated assistants, such as Siri, to access different things on their phone. This means that it is more important than ever to ensure that you’re fulfilling even the smallest of details when launching any sort of digital marketing campaign.

Turn on the accessibility feature on your phone and test your emails and other digital marketing content using the Voice Over (IOS) or TalkBack (Android). This will help you identify areas of weakness for the visually impaired audience and anyone else who prefers to listen instead of reading content.

Accessibility Can Move Your Bottom Line

With such a large percentage of the population requiring these accessibility tools to access your content, it is vital that your marketing efforts meet the standards. Otherwise, you’ll lose your audience.

Spark Interiors is a Denver-based interior design firm run by local businesswoman Megan Thompson. After being founded in 2013, Spark Interiors quickly reached and surpassed a number of milestones, including acquiring some major commercial accounts, such as the Arvada Chamber of Commerce. It was this experience with corporate interior design that led to Spark Interiors’ goal of becoming a leading design firm for commercial spaces.

After recognizing some shortcomings with Spark Interiors current digital visibility and reach, Megan came to us.

She knew that in order to widen her exposure to commercial clients, Spark Interiors would need to optimize their digital presence. We conducted initial market research and determined a campaign strategy that would help Spark Interiors achieve their goals.

Website Redesign

The original website for Spark Interiors lacked two key components that drive digital success. The first was an aesthetic appeal that was consistent with the brand and promoted user-friendliness and the second was body copy to prove authority on the subject of commercial interior design.

Our graphic designer worked closely with Megan to develop a unique brand identity that kept users on the Spark Interiors web pages. With aesthetically pleasing design enhancements and a user-friendly interface, the bounce rate decreased by more than 150 percent. A bounce rate is the percentage of web users who navigate away from a site after viewing only a single page. We interpret a low bounce to mean that users are finding what they are looking for when viewing our web pages.

Search Engine Optimization

The next step was to optimize the content on the Spark Interiors website to show search engines that we provide what searchers are looking for when they use certain keywords. Page by page, we built out the content for each of the Spark Interiors specialties. The increased usability and keyword optimized content drove organic search traffic to a 120 percent increase. Spark Interiors more than tripled the number of new users that visited their website last month.

Direct Marketing

Email Marketing

A fully automated e-mail campaign launched this month, including unique newsletters written by the Spark Interiors principal designer. With a customized workflow, we are able to deliver personalized messaging to potential, current, and past clients to establish top-of-mind awareness for Spark Interiors within a targeted audience.

Campaign Results

While the Spark Interiors marketing campaign continues to expand, the results of the initial efforts are undeniable. With overall site traffic more than tripled since the launch of this campaign and interaction with nearly 300 new users, the Spark Interiors digital presence has exploded. In just six weeks, Spark Interiors has been contacted by more than 30 potential clients.

If you are interested in exponential growth and increased brand awareness for your business, FiG Advertising + Marketing is the agency for you. From market research to campaign analysis, we deliver unbeatable results from all of your campaign deliverables. Find out what we can do for your brand today.

If you recall, last month we talked about marketing automation and content marketing, and how it’s generally a good strategy for most businesses that handle a lot of customer data. Any business that has a large clientele, or is trying to generate a larger client base can benefit from a client nurturing tool like marketing automation software.

As we’ve recently been working with an Automotive Dealership as a prospective client — one who is currently considering doing marketing automation with us — we thought this would be the perfect opportunity to showcase a perfect example of exactly how automation can benefit a particular business model. In this example, the business is a car dealership, and as you can imagine they handle a lot of customer data.

First we should address why an automative dealership is the ideal example of a business that can benefit from marketing automation and content marketing…

Automotive Marketing is Quickly Changing:

Automotive marketing is changing – as people spend more time on the internet, dealerships must take on digital marketing strategies. With the rapid growth of technology, there are more ways than ever of engaging potential consumers and then drawing them into the showroom – bring in sales and build revenue, whether through new car sales, used car sales, or automotive services. But the means of attracting these sales are undergoing a shift. Dealers must integrate yesterday’s most effective techniques with the more advanced strategies of today.

Let’s dissect the challenge…

Keeping the Customers from Getting Lost:

In the digital age, few customers even consider buying a car without doing their own research. Often times this research comes from a Google search, which brings the consumer a barrage of competitors ads alongside millions of results among which he or she has no guidance. For automotive dealerships, the consumer distractions caused by search engine marketing can be very costly. Often a dealership will spend money on a marketing campaign that convinces consumers to search for new cars, only to result in a consumer’s Google search that is sometimes not optimized for the dealership. With every search result clicked, it becomes less and less likely that the dealership will be the one eventually closing the deal.

The solution? Keep the consumer from ever leaving the safety of a dealership’s website…

Doing the Research for Consumers (Content Marketing):

The first step in blocking potential customers from search engine distractions is content marketing – doing the analyzing for the consumers. Content marketing is a dealership’s distribution of informative and helpful material that an automotive consumer will find interesting. Instead of a dealership sending potential customers off to search the web and hoping that they land on the dealership’s web page, content marketing allows a dealer to effectively do the research for the consumers and then present it in an attractive and engaging way. The use of content marketing as a means of customer search control is even more effective with the addition of personalization.

For example, a personalized content marketing campaign could be the distribution of fuel economy statistics to consumers who have already purchased a car from the dealership. Based on the car that the customer purchased, he or she will receive an email listing the newest model of his or her car as compared to competing cars from other brands. By personalizing a consumer’s content by his car model, a pickup truck owner will not see a content piece comparing luxury sedan fuel efficiencies; instead he will see a chart suggesting that the newest model of his truck is more fuel-efficient than its competitors.

However, a merely useful and informative email does not guarantee that the consumer will stay away from Google. Further direction is needed, as the dealership must operate under the assumption that consumers are not satisfied without further research. The inclusion of a personalized URL link along with the promise of more information online grants consumers a sense of control over their own research, while at the same time holds them within the boundaries of the dealership’s controlled information zone. With this personalized network of information, the dealership has provided consumers with the information they would have otherwise searched for on Google, thus protecting their dealership loyalty and vastly increasing the likelihood that their next purchase will come from the dealership that distributed the useful information.

Personalized Automotive Marketing:

Personalization is the best and most cost effective way for a dealership to make its own marketing campaigns stand out from those of its competitors. Using list data captured from CRM systems and list building campaigns, car marketers are able to tailor messages and offers to multiple list segments.

Automotive marketers can use new, intuitive personalization techniques to display specialized offers to consumers based on age, income, current car model, etc. to ensure that the offer received is relevant. These offers direct consumers to personalized landing pages providing more information about the offer, the vehicle, or the dealership in general. Under this strategy, customers don’t need search engines, and dealerships keep them within their “safe spaces” throughout the length of the sales process. Thus, landing pages are the ultimate solution to protecting campaigns from Google.

List Segmentation and Drip Campaigns:

Personalized campaigns are great for automotive marketing, but what if a dealership wants to follow up with only one segment of the initial campaign blast? That’s where drip marketing comes in. Drip marketing allows a marketer to send out secondary rounds of campaigns to specific segments of the targeted audience.

For example, an auto marketer, after sending out a direct advertisement with a landing page URL to a broad list of prospective consumers, may choose to continue the conversation with only those consumers who opened their URL. The marketer will then use a marketing automation system to send out a “drip” email to the addresses of all the designated consumers.

Using this technique, a dealership is able to quickly identify and nurture the best leads from its campaign and thus more efficiently convert those leads into sales.

Service Department Marketing:

While a lot of dealers focus efforts on car buyer acquisitions, more are starting to look towards the service department as an opportunity to expand relationships. Gaining customers is often a very costly and timely process, and as profit margins on new car sales grow slimmer, dealerships are turning to their service departments to generate more revenue. Service department marketing usually requires far less time and money. This is because a dealership already has all the data it needs as well as a proven relationship with the customers it is trying to reengage. Using information from its database, a dealership may create personalized campaigns and drips specific to a past customer’s model, last service date, number of miles driven, or more. By reminding the customer of the dealership’s services, highlighting excellent staff, value, or convenience with testimonials of others with the same car, all in a format personalized to the individual’s automotive needs, the dealer drastically improves the department’s exposure and revenue. Service department marketing is and will continue to be a rapidly growing sector of automotive marketing, and it represents an exceptional opportunity to boost the entire dealership’s revenue.

Conclusion/Wrap-Up:

Now that we’ve showed you an example of how marketing automation and content marketing can benefit one type of business, let’s conclude this article by overviewing all the advantages of marketing automation, applicable to any business:

1.Marketing automation is a huge time saver. You can create multiple campaigns and posts ahead of time and schedule them for a time and date in the future.

2.Marketing automation allows you to reach each one of your unique customers. Rather than having to manually segment customers based on their needs and preferences, marketing automation allows you to simply create restrictions that will allow customers to be automatically separated.

3. Marketing automation makes the most of your staff resources. With an automated solution, a single staff member can execute complex and ongoing campaigns and can connect with many more customers than would be possible manually.

4. Marketing automation helps you to maintain consistency. If, for example, you are manually posting to Twitter or Facebook, you may remember to post on most days yet other work may take priority on some days. If you have automated posts or tweets scheduled, your account stays fresh and up to date so visitors know that you are an active and engaged business.

5. Marketing automation provides detailed reports. Automated marketing solutions keep track of each campaign. A great solution will provide you with detailed graphs, statistics and other report data that you can analyze in order to optimize future campaigns. Having data from your campaigns automatically collected and organized makes it simple to review essential data.

6. Marketing automation saves you money. If you are looking to efficiently manage your budget, marketing automation is an ideal solution. By reducing the need for staff to spend as much time and effort creating and distributing messages and collecting data, you can make the most of your resources.

7. Marketing automation makes it possible for any business to create a consistent brand presence on multiple channels. Maintaining a consistent brand helps customers to identify your business and connect with you. Allowing customers to interact with your business in multiple ways makes it easy for customers to reach you in a way that is convenient for them, and it increases your visibility which helps to draw in new customers.

8. Marketing automation makes lead nurturing easier. No longer do you have to only connect with each lead manually, which can be time-consuming. An automated marketing solution can help you reach out to a potential lead right from the beginning of their interaction. If, for example, a customer visits your website and signs up to receive your newsletters you can connect with them right away with an automated solution. They will receive a welcome and confirmation message, and you can also tell the solution to send all new customers a discount coupon and a survey about their preferences.

9. Marketing automation helps you to build more useful and detailed customer profiles. An automated solution is always gathering information based on customers’ purchases, email opens and responses, selected preferences and more. All this data is stored for future use, to allow you to reach out to each customer more effectively.

If you would like to learn more about how marketing automation could benefit your business, please contact us.

FiG is pleased to announce our new relationship with an East Coast client–Kim Niemi, a Virginia realtor with Prudential Towne Realty.

The Client:

Kim Niemi is a full service real estate agent in Virginia Beach, specializing in mid-range priced homes as a real estate listing agent and buyers agent. With a deep understanding of the challenges inherent to real estate and an excellent familiarity with the Hampton Roads area, Kim has a keen eye that recognizes and helps meet customers needs in buying or selling a home.

The Challenge:

The main challenge that brought Kim to FiG is the contemporary internet marketing need. Kim recognizes that her customers frequently rely on the internet to research properties, and she has decided to leverage a professional internet marketing company to capture new traffic and leads.

Internet marketing for the real estate industry is not new any more, and it is getting more crowded every day. In order to stand out, generate leads, and capture the online traffic, Kim has to have a unique voice and strategic marketing presence online. To help Kim make the transition online and achieve this goal, FiG has been contracted to develop her web presence from the ground up and to leave no stone unturned in our efforts to generate leads through maximized incoming traffic. Our team will adopt a gradual plan and start with email marketing that will nurture the relationship with existing customers and potential prospective customers:

FiG will strategize the email marketing plan

FiG will create the content calendar and topics for Kim to effectively communicate with her contacts

How well are you doing with internet marketing? Contact FiG to optimize your marketing effectiveness.